ABA INDIANS. In 1683-84 Juan DomÃnguez de Mendoza led an exploratory expedition from El Paso as far eastward as the junction of the Concho and Colorado rivers east of the site of present San Angelo. In his itinerary he listed the names of thirty-seven Indian groups, including the Abas, from whom he expected to receive delegations on the Colorado River. Nothing further is known about the Abas, who seem to have been one of many Indian groups of north central Texas that were swept away by the southward thrust of the Lipan Apache and Comanche Indians in the eighteenth century. However, it is possible that the Abas were the same people as the Hapes, a Coahuiltecan band of the same period that ranged from northeastern Coahuila across the Rio Grande into the southwestern part of the Edwards Plateau in Texas, though this identification has yet to be demonstrated.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Herbert Eugene Bolton, ed., Spanish Exploration in the Southwest, 1542-1706 (New York: Scribner, 1908; rpt., New York: Barnes and Noble, 1959). Charles W. Hackett, ed., Pichardo's Treatise on the Limits of Louisiana and Texas (4 vols., Austin: University of Texas Press, 1931-46).
